


Slavefic: My thoughts on a genre

by Mossgreen



Category: Original Work
Genre: Essays, Gen, Mention of 2770 Ab Urbe Condita, Mention of Eagle of the Ninth, Meta, Nonfiction, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24472642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	Slavefic: My thoughts on a genre

Well, as ItstartedwithPotter and Imperial_Dragon have both written something about their origin story, so to speak, it's probably only fair that I do so, too.

I've been reading slavefic stories since I was a kid - the first one I remember reading was _Eagle of the Ninth_ by Rosemary Sutcliff, which introduces the secondary character as a gladiator who is then bought by the main character. I enjoy and love the whole book, but I'm drawn back over and over again to those early two or three chapters with Esca. I also read The Lantern Bearers and Blood Feud by the same author, and again, it's the early few chapters I keep coming back to.

I lurked at the slavefic and orig_slavefic LJ communities, which had some really good stories on them, and read the Slave Breakers series as it was being written (I think Bran was completed when I found it, and Jesse was mostly completed, but I read Lee while it was a WIP, and all the backstories and one-shots) and loved the exploration of that world and how it affected the characters and their points-of-view. (For those who are interested, Maculategiraffe has recently published Bran over here, but backdated - [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23970019)).

I'm not sure _why_ I'm drawn to slavefic as a genre. I think the complete disparity between the free person and the slave-who-is-a-person-but-not-legally is interesting to explore - how does the slave react? What is their life actually like? Can they retain the things that make them _them_ despite not having autonomy over themselves? How do they survive in a world that insists they aren't and can't be equal to the person who legally owns them? How does the owner react? Are they a reluctant owner, or have they fully bought into what their society has taught them about the relative places of free people and slaves?

Can slavery ever be justified in an alternate universe? No - but the people living in that universe do and can justify it, even if their arguments don't hold water according to our values. After all, slavery was justified (although it's wrong!) on our own planet, in our own history, for centuries. That doesn't make it right. But writing in a world that accepts slavery as the normal way things work leads to exploration of 'the other' - different beliefs, different ideas and ideals, different cultures. And it's when we refuse to explore different cultures, refuse to try to understand people who think differently from us, that we separate ourselves from other people (or run the risk of it) and begin to fear them, and that leads to all sorts of issues and arguments just because someone else is different, because we somehow no longer see them as people equal to us, with the same rights we have. (Wow, that got deep!)

And using the slavefic trope, however it works (or doesn't) in the world you're writing or reading, is a safe way to explore ideas that are (hopefully very) different from the world we live in. Which is why I don't condemn slavefic, although I utterly condemn slavery itself.

There is quite a lot of stuff under the slavefic tag here on AO3, but some of the newer stuff is a little lacking in its style, especially when compared to some older fanfic stuff - which is a shame, some of it has a lot of potential. I can only hope that the writers come back and severely rewrite it to meet that potential.

Things that I've enjoyed in the slavefic genre:  
[The Red Braid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712114) by fran_fic (original)  
[Slave Breakers](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Slave%20Breakers%20-%20maculategiraffe/works) (link goes to the tag, which includes fanfic in this universe)  
[Tiger on the Silk Road](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813073) by Conduitstreetcat and TheGreenFaerie (Sherlock fic, but requires zero knowledge of the actual characters)  
The [Tatooine Slave Culture](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Tatooine%20Slave%20Culture/works) tag - a universe invented by Fialleril (apparently there's a load of world-building stuff on her Tumblr, but I'm not, and never have been, on Tumblr)  
I've also read a number of different Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis slavefics  
[Two Words](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19461034) by MarieMaea (original)


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